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17
31 — # 08/09 (Dezember 2006)
Das Magazin des Instituts für Theorie
der Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich (ith)
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Storytelling
It is the technology that explicitly distinguishes knowledge
transfer in the Blackmarket from any other learning
situation. Telling a story immediately disassociates the
object of transmission from a discipline with a history. That
is furthermore why the Blackmarket is an event: it has
nothing to do with the inscription of difference (the political
mission of inscribing a different knowledge), with tracing
or archiving the traces of erased traces. Even if it does
have the economy of excess, of dépense or expenditure as
the surplus of signification, it still is a trade and not a matter
of gift and exchange. Selling one’s story unmasks a fundamental
social contract: it places the storyteller in the blatant
position of «perform or else» and the client in a position to
demand the supply. Narration leads away from the academic
methods of analyzing, contextualizing, commenting on and
verifying information. It actually disassociates knowledge
from information and defines it halfway between what one
knows as an object of knowledge, study, discipline (savoir) on
the one hand, and what one is subjectified by as experience or
acquaintance (connaissance) on the other hand. The knower
here is not someone who has a love for knowledge and whose
knowledge is necessarily legitimated by an institution, but the
knower can be a trickster who not only betrays the dominant
regimes but also takes possession of territories that do not
belong to her or do not exist yet and are, therefore, invented.
Subjectification and expertise
If subjectification is not just identification or interpretation
of something from one’s own experience, but always
already a transformation, making something one’s own by
bastardizing it, ‹fucking› it up, giving it one’s own body, then
expertise implies honouring a general condition, or a condition
for a general intellect: that there is always something
one knows. The ability to know and pass on that knowledge
consists not so much in what one knows but rather in how
one knows. Subjectification is all about partiality and partial
insights that, in fact, enable participation on a contingent
basis. Partiality should also be read in opposition to ‹being
impartial›, i.e. objective, unbiased or dispassionate. Now,
the Blackmarket’s mission is not to empower humankind by
making it realize its own capacity, but to unravel potentialities
that constitute uncertain and less visible circulations of
that which makes up knowledge: assumptions, beliefs, opinions,
habits, facts, information, techniques etc. The talk is
an encounter that establishes a relation between knowledge
and non-knowledge, activates learning and unlearning,
explores the difference and the distance between ignorance
and opinion on the one hand and what is idealized as its
opposite, i.e. knowledge, on the other hand. In Hurtzig’s
own words, quoting Niklas Luhmann, the Blackmarket
should be understood pragmatically as a «tool to find problems
for the solutions that already exist».
Topics and experts
In the first Blackmarket there were a hundred talks
featured under the following headings: Accidents, Activism,
political, Aeronautics, Animals, Architecture, Cartography,
Choreography, Communication, Customs, Dilemma, Ecotrophology,
Education, Ethics, Games, Language, Media,
Memory, Meteorology, Millinery, Music, historical string
instruments, Music, listening, Music, composing, Music, noise/sound,
Music, song, Money, Nirvana-Principle, No Headword,
Orientation, Poetry, Quantum mechanics, Sex, Somatology,
Space, Sports, Techniques, arts, Techniques and
body, Techniques, crafts, Text, Theatre, Tourism, Translation,
Urbanism, Work. Listing all the topics serves to show
that the heterogeneity was not choreographed from above,
as a pool of themes to choose from and respond to. Rather,
the themes were the result of an a posteriori grouping of
the talks as they were formulated by experts. The formulations
cover a variety of strategies and tactics of self-determination:
from a straightforward understanding of one’s own
professional knowledge (e.g. Tilman Muthesius, violinmaker,
«Historical stringed instruments before 1800. The
Viola da Gamba and the Viola da Braccio»), through politically
edgy propositions (e.g. Katja Reichard, co-initiator of
the bookstore pro qm, artist, collective projects on urbanism,
gender, work «Forms of self-exploitation: working life
in times of difference capitalism»), unexpected mismatches
between profession and proclaimed expertise (e.g. Quantum
mechanics, Alexej Kairetdinow, poet, translator: «The
uncertainty principle does [not] work without formulas. A
philologist explains an experiment from quantum mechanics»;
or Percy McLean, judge at the Administrative Court,
expert for human rights, honorary president of the organization
for holistic medicine ‹Der Weg der Mitte›: «Face and
neck massage. Theory and practice») to characteristically
humorous or bizarre inventions (Christof Kurzmann, musician:
«Learning Viennese with Asterix»; Carmen Bruder,
Psychologist, PhD TU Berlin, men-machine-interface:
«Why it is not your fault if your computer goes nuts. On the
psychological background of technical systems development
and what you can contribute»).